Campaign ads are often full of empty or vague promises with footage of America looking generically splendid — creating hilarious tonal dissonance with our perceptions of what must actually be going on in campaign offices. A fake campaign ad for Frank Underwood — Kevin Spacey’s power-hungry politician character on House of Cards — was just released by Netflix as a teaser trailer for Season 4, and it beautifully highlights the bullshit behind these videos. It happens to have run during a commercial break for last night’s Republican Debates — and until people saw Frank Underwood’s face, it was so innocuous and useless that they easily could have thought it was an ad for almost any candidate — Democrat or Republican.
As it turns out, campaign ads are far more compelling tools for political thriller television than they are for real presidential candidates. Here, behind every healthy wheat field, every patriotic fighter plane, every family hugging their veteran patriarch, is the notion that Frank Underwood got to the White House by smooshing a reporter on subway tracks, killing a Pennsylvania Representative with carbon monoxide poisoning, and callously screwing over everyone else on this list.
Netflix also revealed in a Tweet that the season would begin on March 4, 2016:
https://twitter.com/HouseofCards/status/676958731603681280/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Watch the teaser trailer/Underwood campaign ad: